LONDON — The best part about women’s boxing are the bios. I covered the semifinals Wednesday and nearly every one had an interesting tale:

Marlen Esparza, U.S. She grew watching boxing with her dad and started in 2002 at age 13. Her hook is her beauty. She’s a model for Cover Girl and applies makeup before every bout. With the bulky head gear and baggy shorts, all the women look like men from my press seat halfway up the stands. In fact, the International Boxing Association, boxing’s international governing body, first wanted to replace shorts with skirts to tell the gender.

The women threatened to kick the IBA’s butt. They’re wearing shorts.

Esparza doesn’t try to hide her beauty. Even in interviews she talks about what makes her different.

“A lot of people just tell me because of my looks why am I boxing and not so much why a girl is boxing,” she said.

She said she’s received some attention from around the Olympic Village from some pro basketball players. That’s not easy.

“You really don’t get a lot of attention when you’re walking with your gloves,” she said. “A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, what are you, a diver?’ No. I’m a boxer. It’s cool. I made a lot of friends.”

Chungneijang Mery Kom Hmangte, India. I wrote about how she started at age 18 and hid it from her parents. Her father only found out when he picked up the paper one morning and saw her picture in it for winning the Manipur state championship. Then he told her she’d never marry because no man will marry a woman with a battered face.

Well, she married, had twin boys, became a cop and made the Olympics at 29.

Nicola Adams, Great Britain. As a little girl she tagged along with her mother to the gym for her aerobics classes. It had an after-school boxing program and joined. She went on to win the 2010 world title.

Mavzuna Chorieva, Tajikistan. Her dad is a former boxer and wanted a son but got her. So he raised her like a boy. She comes into the ring with a black skull cap and mocks her opponents by sticking out her chain and windmilling her right arm.